Posted by scotsboyuk
Does anyone else think that the current price of downloading ringtones, wallpapers, etc is too high? I think that £1.50 for a wallpaper is rediculous, 25p would be a more suitable price. I know the networks and content providers have to make some money out of downloads, but they would almost certainly make a lot more money if they lowered their prices as more people would download more content more often.
Posted by SsTiTcH
Yes its outrageous what networks charge for downloads.. Luckily theres plenty of sites to get themes..games .. ringtones etc. for free.. Bloody network already makes a mint off my international calling..mms and sms..why shud i pay em more for stuff i can get free..
Posted by parsnip
Stupid 3 walled garden
Posted by scotsboyuk
Having had experience of both 3 and Vodafone's 3G services, I can say that neither of them are particuarly cheap when it comes to downloads. 3's news clips are only 25p each, which is quite reasonable in my opinion.
If the networks want to recoup the cost of their 3G licenses they will have to lower their prices to motivate people to buy their content.
Posted by Vlammetje
Voda tv is 25 eurocent for 15 minutes (or for any portion of 15 minutes) but rumour has it prices will increase to 2 or 3 euro er 15 minutes in Feb 2005.
Now that is toooooo expensive imho
Posted by amnesia
i just dont understand network pricing anymore
Posted by scotsboyuk
I don't think we shall see lower prices until 3G has been better established and has more customers. More advanced features should help to reduce prices further as older features e.g. ringtones come down in price.
Posted by Sammy_boy
To be honest, I'm going to stay put on 2G until the pricing on their data and internet services come down, more networks have a 3G service up and running (therefore more competition), and the signals are much, MUCH better. Where I live, I can just about get a 3G signal on 3, Orange and Voda forget it at the moment!
Apparently Voda don't do it, but I'm hoping the practice of ringfencing you into that particular network's services and not letting you out to other sites (e.g. Esato) has to stop too, so people can make full use of the faster download speeds and access other sites too
Posted by scotsboyuk
@Sam
I imagine that we shall see a great improvement in 3G over the next year, not just in terms of infrastructure, but also in terms of the services provided to customers.
The ring-fencing approach of 3 will almost certainly have to end if they want to remain competitive, they will loose customers if they don't. 3 are gaining customers by massively undercutting their competitors, not through their data services. Once 3's data services become a dominant factor in customer acquisition they will have to reconsider their ring-fencing approach and pricing levels.
Posted by voda_jon
The pricing on Vodafone Live! comes from many different things... The first one is obviously profit... but u also have to take into consideration things like developers costs, hosting costs (even vodafone have to pay for hosting a LOT of files), publishers fees, and royalties to the people who make the content... There is also the associated cost in keeping the service working and up to date every day...
Vodafone are slowly starting to offer more for your money with things like free sports, news, weather info and downloads on the new 3G price plans and half price ringtones and other good offers every now and then.
Once the general public start using the services a lot more then the prices in turn will come down as well...
i gotta go now coz the roof on ma shed is bein blown down the street!!!
Posted by scotsboyuk
@voda_jon
I understand that the networks have to cover costs and make a profit, but that still doesn't mean they should overprice their content and services. A wallpaper image costing £1.50 does not use up a huge amount of resources to store, not does it require a heavy use of resources to sell.
If the networks were to make their prices much lower they would probably see a massive rise in data usage and revenue as customers would be more willing to pay for content that they can get free from the internet.
If the networks want people to continue buying what they can get for free and mor eoften, then prices have to come down. If the networks were to massively reduce their content charges now, it would, in my opinion. give their 3G sales a massive boost. I would imagine that many customers would like the idea of being able to download content very quickly and not having to pay a lot of money to do so.
Posted by 701
the truth is that the media content and data services arent the dominant business in the gsm nets so they r tryin to do the best out of it.One wallpapets costs to themmaybe 3 cents(royalities,fees,hosting) so the profit is 1500% for each customer that downloads that. Multiply it with thousands of customers across the countr and stop finding excuses for them.We r the cows with the milk :D I never bought media contentcuz i have it 4 free over the net but i know lots of others too lazy to complicate themselves so they buy it..it wont work with high prices.They will have to cut it downin order to sell something,anything..
Posted by scotsboyuk
@701
Not everyone is technical minded and many people may not know how to get free content from the internet, indeed I suspect tht this scenario would apply to most mobile users.
Data is not the primary source of revenue for the networks, but as 3G becomes more prevalent data services will start to account for more and more of the revenue networks receive. The networks could do themselves a huge favour by making data sevices so cheap that people want to use them on a regular basis.
3G has a great deal of potential with regards to data services, but only if the pricing is at a level customers find acceptable, the current pricing structure just doesn't cut it in my opinion.
Posted by wagawaga
Swiss prices: Voda live TV here is
4.00 CHF / 2.58€ for 30 minutes or (an expensive way to impress your friends)
8.00 CHF / 5.17€ for 2 hours or
12.00 CHF / 7.75€ for 24 hours access (data transfer included in these prices. 24 hours are ok if you think how much data get effectively transferred).
Wallpapers are 2.50 CHF / 1.60€
Reading news is
0.50 CHF / 0.32€ for 30 minutes (ridiculous!)
2.00 CHF / 1.29€ for 1 week
3.00 CHF / 1.94€ for 1 month access (ok if you use it daily)
Additionally, data access for 1 megabyte is 10 CHF / 6.46€, but there is a VodafoneLive-data-flatrate you can subscribe to for 5 CHf / 3.23€ (ridiculously high if you ask me...
)
I'm reading websites regularly through the google web2wap converter, but am not using any of the other stuff (except showing off Live TV
). I'd say give us an unlimited data flatrate for 20 CHF / 13€ and we're talkin' 
Posted by dave_uk
I wouldn't be so sure about an impending price reduction. I think that what we are seeing at the moment with ringfenced content from 3 and Vodafone continuing overpricing their 2G services into 3G as well, is the networks trying to recover some of the massively over-inflated costs of the licences they bought in '99. It looks as though the regulators, at least in the UK, are starting to crackdown (albeit far too slowly) on the stealth collaboration between operators that is leading to consumers getting a raw (aka expensive) deal. Therefore, until anti-competitive prices are forced down by the likes of Ofcom, I can't see prices falling. The networks will want to squeeze as much profit out of consumers as possible early on, so that they might run into profitability sometime before 5G comes along!
Just MHO....
Posted by OluYom
@dave: I heard its Super-3G... :D I agree with Sammy & Scots: If 3g nets want to make more profit from data, vis-a-vis voice, simple biz sense says, 1. lower costs on data to encourage more ppl to use it; and 2. pull down the fences and let ppl browse freely. Any network too stupid to realise & implement these simple principles cannot get a penny outta my pocket.
Posted by scotsboyuk
Data prices won't come down until data charges constitute a larger proportion of the network's revenue. Paradoxically though, data charges are unlikely to constitute a larger proportion of network revenue until prices come down.
Posted by OluYom
@scots: Exactly the paradox of the situation :)
Posted by voda_jon
hello again... over the last 3yrs voda has seen its data revenue increase a great amount... vodafone live! has really opened the networks eyes on how much data can play a part of revenue and how important it is to get it right... dont forget data services r still relativley new and it always takes some time to get things 100% right if ever!...
Vodafone Live! started the data revolution (imho), it was the first to have a full colour menu that defined many of the other networks' portals as well...
J.
Posted by scotsboyuk
@voda_jon
I would agree with you to an extent, but I am still of the opinion that greater growth (and profits) could be had if prices were to come down.
Wasn't DoCoMo's imode the first to make data services popular?
Posted by wagawaga
About "recovering the huge umts licence costs with Portals": Some countries sold the licences very cheap (30M€ in Switz.), yet still the prices are way up there, this can't be the reason.
Here's a nice question: At which cheaper price-point would you change the way you use data services?
And is there a realistic middle ground, considering that the mobile providers might have to make a little return as well?
Posted by OluYom
@wagawaga: On the issue of profit, Scots argument a few posts back brilliantly answers that.. On issue of price point, that will vary from country to country. One thing is sure, an operator will NEVER recoup its investments on a service if subscribers refuse to use that service because of its high pricing.
Posted by dave_uk
@AYA
You're right, but ultimately if ALL the networks within a country collaborate to keep prices at an artificially high level, and users either have the choice of using what services are available and paying the prices, or not using at all, surely the majority (not Esato members who may know better - I think we know we don't represent the majority, or we'd all have 10MP camera, Wi-Max UIQ 3.0 phones
) will take what they can get rather than boycotting the services on a price principle?
I agree that if one network (most likely to be Orange in the UK, I would imagine) were to take the lead and make the suggested reductions you/Scots and many others suggest that all the others will be forced to follow suit, making the market much more competitive to the benefit of consumers. The problem is that nobody looks likely to do this, given the high cost of licences and the fact that they are, at present, allowed to get away with what is effectively price-fixing.
I do accept the point though the UMTS idiots-auction that took place in the UK 5 years ago can't be entirely responsible for the inflated prices elsewhere, though you have to recognise that Vodafone paying c.£7bn for a UK UMTS operating licence is going to have a knock-on effect for it's global 3G network partners, likewise with Orange (France Telecom), T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom) and 3 (Hutchinson-Whampoa) who all have global 3G representation.
Posted by Sony Ericsson Indonesia
i have free video calls till march
Posted by OluYom
@dave: Well articulated. And you are definitely 100% correct about informed Esateans being the minority, among other points. So who (or which network) is going to bell the 3G cat? If I lived in the UK for example, I personally would keep off 3G till further notice. Nuff said :)
Posted by scotsboyuk
The telecoms regulatory body, Offcom, should really be doing something about the prices if the networks aren't going to take the initiative. Pricing will have to come down though, there is only so much that customers will pay and the networks will eventually be forced to address the issue or customers will loose interest in using the pricey features that the networks provide.
If one looks to video calling for example, one would see that this feature could be a very popular feature, but at current pricing levels it is unlikely to be used very much by the average customer. Reducing the price of this feature wouldn't harm profits at all, just as the reduction of voice call charges, from their initial high levels, didn't harm profits.
Data services are not the primary source of income for the networks and they never will be unless they are made more attractive to the customer. If the pricing levels are to remain as they are the networks should at least make the content worth the money. Either offer more for the the current prices or reduce the prices for the current content.
Posted by voda_jon
@scotsboy... yeh in japan docomo introduced the first true data services but in the UK vodafone led the pack on true data services...
Posted by scotsboyuk
@voda_jon
I have been very impressed by Vodafone, having joined them for the first time a few weeks ago when I bought my V800. The data services are good, although I would like to see more diversity in the content that is offered as well as a reduction in prices of course.
Posted by holistica
I have 60mins free video calling and 50mb's free data every month for a year on Orange 3G.
And most of the downloads are free anyhow.The prices of tones, games, pics and premium video clips etc are exactly the same as before on 2.5G. However, now they download much faster and are much better quality and can be streamed as well as downloaded.
This is why I upgraded to 3G in the first place..... and I love using my z1010 as a 3G modem with my laptop. Its only 50p a MB after the free 50MB's a month and I hardly go over it anyhow since I use my broadband connection at home most of the time.
The change over from 2.5 to 3G is seamless and Orange do indeed have the most integrated 3G network in the UK at the moment as promised. I am very impressed.
Video calling works great with my m8's on both Orange and 3 and I think video mail is a great idea too.
Shame about the current handsets though.... but my USIM works A OK in my P900 anyhow via 2/2.5G
To conclude, I upgraded FOC to 3G and got a z1010 FOC too and I have saved myself £10 per month not having to pay a GPRS/Data bundle. That'll be a £120 saving this year for me.
And as others have mentioned things can only get more competitively priced as times moves on.
A happy and loyal Orange customer and z1010 and P900 user
Posted by voda_jon
@holistica... most integrated network??? Vodafones handover from 2G to 3G is seamless.. no different from ne other network... coverage wise vodafones take is that we prefer to be like a thick crust pizza... lower coverage but better quality whereas orange and 3 are thin crust... more coverage but less quality of network... AND voda are the only network (as far as i know) that allow its customers to look round its own content as much as they like without charging their customers or taking it off their data bundle... U r only charged if u browse outside of the LIVE! garden or download content like games or ringtones or mp3's (after the first 3 until the end of feb) or wallpaper. We also have the widest range of content and i personally feel of a very high quality...
on the content side i dont see oftel coming in and forcing prices to be lower. How long have the networks been charging for this content... and still oftel havent told them to lower the prices... its just as it is in the games industry... money gets syphoned off to everyone in the line of production and the prices stay the same until a game (content) is older or superseeded... This is startin to be seen with some java games and some other content where by the older they r or superseeded they r lowered in price.
I am 99.9% sure that we will see prices coming down via special offers and other additions to the network... but every networks main priority at the mo is getting the 3G networks up and running and fulfilling their legal obligations by 2007... it is probably then we will c the true fight for customers to start...